Christians … were much more rigorous about matters of sex than the prevailing attitudes in the Roman Empire; they did not forget their founder’s fierce disapproval of divorce… either party in a non-Christian Roman marriage could declare the relationship to be at an end. Likewise, abortionand the abandonmentof unwantedchildrenwereacceptedasregrettablenecessitiesin Roman society, but like the Jews, the Christians were insistent that these practices were completely unacceptable. (Emphasis added.)

Diarmaid MacCulloch, in Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

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Oxford Historian MacCulloch lays it right out there for us to read and think about. He writes here of the early church and their opposition to divorce, abortion, child abandonment. He shows us the vast difference between the Romans and Roman authorities and Christians, Believers.

While public entities, governments, and politicians have not changed much from those in ancient Rome, Western Culture has departed from its Judeo-Christians.

Look simply at today’s election in Alabama. One Senate candidate is being accused by women as having shown unwelcome interest in them 40 years ago. Their accusations are not laid out in detail and none at this point have offered sworn statements regarding their allocations. Unwilling to say anything about their allegations for four decades – the women now appear on the eve of a Senatorial election to level accusations against the Republican candidate.

Pardon me if I smell a set-up here … but I recall vividly what Democrat Leftists did to Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas with the unsubstantiated claims of Anita Hill that Mr. Thomas uttered odd and suggestive words to her. You see images of video lynchings are not easily forgotten nor are the craven actions of the Democrat Left who count power and ideology more important than truth.

In contrast the Democrat candidate in Alabama today is plainly pro-abortion and this established fact has no weight in today’s public conversation about sexual mores and mortal behavior.

So we have unsubstantiated allegations vs. established pro-abortion. One think the we are living as Romans at least in the news rooms and among members of the national news media.

We have regressed since the early days of Christianity. We no longer see the issues that were quite clear to Jews and Christians 2000 years ago. Ironically, today’s sexual mess, family deconstruction, pornography, unwed mothers and fatherless families, etc. are the product of the Left’s advocacy and lax morality; and we, regrettably, have been bent to their misshaped ideas, attitudes and policies.

So one concludes two things: one, the early Christians knew better than we as to what constitutes a good, stable and elevated life and, two the Left has worn out its welcome. They have done enough damage.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.

C. S. Lewis, in The Four Lives

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We are made to seek contentment, to love and be loved. In this one fact alone is evidence of God and the essence of our sacred being, itself. Yet, today there are piles of evidence that we are neither content, nor seemingly loving or sufficiently loved.

“Evidence?” you ask. Yes.

Look around. See how few intact families there are. See the divorces. The adulteries. The overt expressions of selfishness and hatred. How we have elevated sexuality and exploited the human body. Look at the predators and those who remained silent while knowing of their assaults, their habitual abuse. Look, too, at pornography. The sexual abuse of children. Abortion. Parents killing their children. The addictions. The “normalizing” of abhorrent conduct – the fiction of “same-sex marriages,” the lunacy of multiple genders. And the grotesque violence. All a product of the desperately unloved.

Now contrast these things with the God who is Love.

We live in a time when God is forsaken and destruction is advanced as a substitute. We make Sodom look tame.

Many like to point to a President as the cause of our serious problems. Others expect “politics” or government to be the source of our health, contentment – salvation.

No, these cannot satisfy.

Our happiness resides with us, with who we are – and with the recognition that God is necessary and the source of all that is good in us, good in human existence and in this mortal world.

It is Christmas time. The source of your happiness is born this month. Wake up!

Polytheists have grown weary of the wildest of fictions. Monotheists have grown weary of most of the wonderful truths. Diabolists here and there have such a hatred of heaven and earth that they have tried to take refuge in hell.

G. K. Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man

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This is the first Christmas in my life that I have the concern that we run the risk of having Christianity stripped from our culture and this nation.

Yes, monotheists have grown weary of the wonderful truths. We have college educated men and women who live limited lives guided by reason, but without faith.

Such a life is incomplete and, in its nature, unsustainable. Life in reason is not and cannot be a full life, a life of depth and vision. A culture without depth and vision cannot help but be a small life of division, a culture lacking in intimacy – a culture in which people lack peace, contentment and unity, a culture in which one forfeits a grasp of transcendence.

Absent faith, some become “disbolists” – intent on forcing their disordered thinking on others. Make no mistake – these individuals occupy the public stage, reside in the professions, in government, education, entertainment and the media. They form advocacy groups to advance their trouble views – discord and destruction result, decay follows.

Today, and at this Christmas, we face God versus godlessness and the times post this question: How longer will there be a Christmas in this land?

Is it not time to renew and to go forward as a witness to Christ each day?

I awake to the sun almost above the mountains and the voices of those singing Gregorian chants for Advent. I am content. I am close to loved ones. I have grandchildren whose very life tells of God and what is good, eternally good. I have enough life in my past to know that I am blessed to have come this far and had so many gifts presented to me. So many memories, so clear that I can relive them – see them once again.

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“The only ultimate reality is God. God lives and dwells in us. We are not justified by any action of our own, but we are called by the voice of God … “

Thomas Merton

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These are the words of Monk Thomas Merton speaking in Calcutta in 1968, months before his death.

Who among you recognizes that God is the ultimate reality? That He dwells in us? That we are called to existence by the voice of God?

Look about. How many so foolishly believe that their action justify them – make them someone – when it reality they are already someone.

If there is one most alarming thing I see today it is godlessness and the advocacy of those who show no humility, no reverence. Rather, with a smidge of “education” which does little more that indoctrinate the dull to mindless Marxism, these loud ones of the Left parrot their superficial mantras and foist their views on others.

So much for the once esteemed universities and colleges.

Dear George Carlin was right “Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”

What to do? The road is clear, visible, here in front of us and it is presented in a most timely manner. Turn the godless Leftists in all their iterations away. They are the few. We are the many. We have quite enough of “unbelief.” It has done sufficient damage to warrant dismissal.

Here in Washington, D.C. the public transit system will not allow the Catholic Archdiocese to purchase advertising space to offer Christmas greetings to transit riders.

Shall we be Moscow? Or Havana? Or North Korea? Or shall we be the United States?

Ms. Reid has her B.A. in film-making from Harvard. (Whoop-dee-do!) From film-making to demographer/political philosopher/constitutional scholar! Shazzam!!! No humility visible there. Wait ’til the people in Iowa and rural Maine learn that they are destroying American democracy. Won’t they be surprised.

Memo to Ms. Reid: A B.A. from Harvard is just about as good as a high school diploma.

The Left Takes Another Torpedo Hit – Matt Lauer of NBC has been fired because of his sexual conduct in the workplace. It seems that sexual miscreants end up as Democrats in the Congress or as self-righteous Lefties in the media and Hollywood. Who would have thunk it!?#!??? Democrat. What a bunch they are!

” … the greatest enemy of the Gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believe(d) in the revealing truth of Scripture.” (Emphasis added.)

Charles Colson

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Human beings since the beginning of time have wanted to proclaim their own divinity. We do this no less today than we always have.

Think about government and politics today. We place confidence in government in a manner that thwarts our reliance on God and diminishes the growth and development of our faith.

When we vest trust and need in government and politics we undermine our faith in God, reduce the scope of our human, psychological and spiritual existence and our wisdom, certitude and contentment.

The limits of human institutions has been recorded in the New and Old Testament. We are less able to perfect the world than we think. Yes, our ego is not a path to omnipotence but rather often a display of our limitations and our need of God.

Our political party on the Left does just that: having no relationship with God and relying on the (dubious) “genius” of man and woman – it stubbornly sells what does NOT WORK, namely: man’s reliance on man to the exclusion of God. Frankly the failures of the Left are visible in history and in the world – now and for years prior to today.

The trust in man, politics, ideology and government is a primary source of our many present problems and divisions. Only a fool would continue to advocate further self-centered reliance on man and man alone. It is time to humbly admit our estrangement from God and take responsibility for many follies that this behavior has produced.

Vesting confidence in government as we do is vesting confidence in man and woman and that is one of the primary ways this nation draws away from God and advances secular existence to the exclusion of our relationship with God and the contentment and stability that faith produces.

This Thanksgiving and Christmas Season, pledge to seek closeness with God. Do so with a very simple act: listen privately to Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere. Make it a frequent act. Use it as your seasonal meditation. Its Truth will touch your heart and soul. From it you will ask: How is it that I live as I do, fall so far short of what God has made me to be?

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The division of human beings into male and female engenders a perpetual search for one another, since only through the joining of bodies can a paradisal unity occur, bringing with it the sense of security and God’s presence.

Andrzej Franaszek, in Milosz

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Here Franaszek cites the sentiment of Czeslaw Milosz in his Unattainable Earth.

Think about the Truth of the matter: men and women are made to seek one another so their union in Paradise may once again be known. Yes, in marriage between a man and a woman we become whole, and God’s presence can be known, felt, ingested and we are fulfilled.

Now think about the gross escapades of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Harvey Weinstein, Senator Franken, Charlie Rose, Anthony Weiner, and so many others. The deeds of these people are godless, sick, evil, sacrilegious, unloving, dehumanizing, abnormal, unhealthy, without honor – disgusting and injurious to all. But think too how they have been cultivated by the “Sexual Revolution” of the late 1960’s and excused by the Progressives, the Left, academics, the media, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, Feminists, Marxists, and those who wish to destroy America and “change” fundamentally who we have been and who God made us to be.

However don’t stop there for there is more fruit from this Poison Tree of this Marxist-inspired sexual liberation. The fruit? Abortion – the killing of unborn children, adultery, pornography, child sexual abuse, female predatory teachers, international sex trade, broken marriage, the fallacy of same-sex marriage, AIDS, “no fault” divorce, families without fathers, teenage pregnancy, dead-beat Dads, single mothers, the fiction of “villages raising children,” the growth of dependent women consigned to a life on the government dole, the political division between men and women fostered by the Democrat Left and “identity politics.”

We have in the last 50 years driven God and faith from culture and surely the public square and deconstructed a healthy society by destroying its vital human institutions and placing belief in God, and faith itself under a veil of suspicion.

Do not make the mistake of seeing today’s tawdry episodes as unrelated to a wave of godless Leftist destruction. No, what we see is the evidence of their years of inter-personal, spiritual and social destruction.

The bill for the Bacchanal has become do. We know who bears responsibility. We no longer need to listen to these errant voices anymore. Their social engineering has failed miserably.

Man and woman: sacred beings. Their union: a sacred vehicle. Abandon this and one pays this price: self-destruction – individually, as to family, community, a political system and a Nation.

For sane people – hard facts demand fundamental change – a restoration of dignity, honor, truth and relationship with God. Step up – reclaim what is your Divine identity and reclaim your life and land. Happiness and prosperity await.

Shalom.

Socialist Drivel – The next time you hear some professor, politician, college student or professor, or a member of the media or a Hollywood celebrity talk about the benefits of socialism – just remember the “Sexual Revolution” and walk away.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart … do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him … He will make your paths straight.

Prov 3: 5, 6

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We have strayed dramatically from God. Our nation has many among its elites who have gone far astray, who trust only in themselves – who have become corrupted.

In this circumstance we see the challenge posed for those who believe in God by those who are godless and hence pursue their selfish interest – power, and personal gain. Yes, the questions joined now are good vs. evil, God vs. godlessness, belief vs. unbelief, Truth vs. falsehood.

In too many who occupy leadership positions God is rejected. It is hard to imagine how it is that one can reject God, a God who is Love.

Think about God who is Love.

It is difficult for humans to imagine a God who loves freely, whose very nature is to love us without fail. Why is this so? Because we often love selectively – love only those who comply with our views, love only those who seem to love us as our condition of loving them. But this is not how God loves.

Through we are sinners, God sends His Son to die for us, so we might believe in Him.

While we love on condition, God loves unconditionally. But mind you this does not give us permission to lie, cheat, steal, be selfish, be a racist, advance sexual dysfunction and declare it normative, kill the unborn, commit adultery and violent crimes, deny reality, etc.

God loves us so that we might have peace, security, joy, contentment, a level of certainty, courage, meaning and purpose, and full growth.

Having been given love – we must love for to not love is to abandon who we are and who God is.

In the God who is love – all are worthy. And yes, those whose behavior is rank, dishonest, selfish say: “I do not believe in anything but me.” We have many of these people in our midst – one cannot yield to them, they must be dismissed, rejected for their ability to destroy is obvious and contrary to God and our welfare.

These naysayers now have greater influence over us and this culture than they warrant. They are in positions of power, in academia and politics, in mass communication, law, education and entertainment – even in religious entities.

Time to restore God’s place in our life, our culture, our nation and our daily discourse. Each of us bear this responsibility.

Shalom.

Sickness – Last night on Tucker Carlson’s show I saw yet another Law Professor (Ekow Yankah) spouting off as if a law degree itself made him smart, and wise.

Law degrees make one neither smart nor wise. If you can read you can become a lawyer. I know I am a lawyer.

Mr. Yankah was not just spouting off, he was advancing Black racism, yes – judging people by their skin color in just the same way feminists judge people by their gender. Whither knowledge of moral philosophy, religion, theology, history, humility, good taste and grace?

We have a real problem of granting to lawyers, judges, academics, the media, politicians and (God help us) celebrities and entrepreneurial technologists knowledge and wisdom that they do not possess. Granting those like Mr. Yankah any public forum is precisely what we ought not to do. We have ignorance enough – no sense adding more and the division these thinly educated, misguided individuals now bring to us.

We seem to concede a great deal of our living to others, to the structures that surround us. Perhaps, it is the desire for “easy” living – a “just-add-water” kind of intellectual and personal shortcut. A shortcut that assumes carelessly, and without thought or examination, that “those in authority” know what they are doing and they act in our best interest.

Living by fantasy or myth? So it seems. Indeed, facts appear to incline to the exact opposite proposition than that “those in authority” know best.

In re-reading British Historian Paul Johnson’s 800 page book Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties I am reminded how Johnson reports that the Germany of World War II was prepared by the unexamined actions of state leaders in the late 1800’s and the early years of thetwentieth century. That is to say: government made choices that unwittingly readied their people for a collision course that became the Second World War.

In particular Johnson points out that the ranks of the industrial workers expanded between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as German industry grew and that the elites and military class resisted sharing power with them so an extensive welfare state was established to placate the population, and that Bismarck manufactured “imaginary foreign threats” that created a unified, subdued German populace – and unwittingly prepared Germany for war. Yes, Johnson reminds the reader that these fears worked their way into subsequent politicians and leaders who fostered German aggression.

What is my point? Proverbs were designed to make each person wiser, to cultivate knowledge and good conduct, independent thinking – greater understanding and insight.

The German state Johnson describes was governed in precisely an opposite manner. It was meant to deceive and reserve all control in the hands of the ruling elites.

Are we not in a very similar situation today?

The Democrat Party of the Left is rigging its primaries, colluding with the Russians to secure outlandish allegations against a political opponent. While in power they are making insider-deals with Russian oligarchs to provide them access to American uranium while identifying a goodly number of Americans as “a basket of deplorables” and furthering the nuclear development of an Iran that seeks “death to America.” Mind you, the comfortable Republican elites are more than willing to go-along-to-get-along.

Frankly, it is the above circumstances which explains the last Presidential election result. Unlike pre-War Germany some in our population know that something is seriously amiss.

Maybe a focus on Proverbs might be in order. Maybe we have an affirmative duty to acquire the wisdom of Solomon. Think about it.

Shalom.

Screamers – When I grew up “screamers” were losers. This was once again re-inforced when yesterday a handful of Lefties “screamed” in unison because Hillary is not president (nor sane, apparently). These people can vote. How sweet.

After recent mass murder in a Texas Church, members of the media (including CNN’s Don Lemon) and minor entertainment “celebrities” snidely suggested that being in Church or praying did nothing to protect the dead or badly wounded victims in this Texas crime.

Unfortunately, today religion, faith are God is placed in question, pushed aside more and more in public discourse. We have gone from constraining prayer and religious symbols in public places to disdain for people of faith, religion, belief, prayer, praying and God.

So what are we left with? Dependence on the people in authority who were required by law to notify those who keep the national registry on individuals who are not permitted to purchase firearms – but failed to do their job?

The perpetrator in the Texas shooting is reported to have served a year in the brig while in the Air Force and received a Dishonorable Discharge, had a history of spousal and child abuse, and escaped from a mental institution – all before this mass killing.

Moving further away from God hardly seems a wise response. Trusting bureaucrats with the safety of you and your family, likewise, seems “iffy” to say the least. How is one protected by a law when the law is not followed?

A group supporting the Democrat Party candidate for Governor in Virginia posted a television ad that depicted a white man driving a pickup truck with a Confederate flag on it and a bumper sticker of his Republican opponent.

The ad displayed minority children running in fear from the truck. The implication was that the driver (a White male) intended to harm the children.

This was despicable. It branded all White males as racists, those who do harm to children. While the controversial ad was eventually “pulled” by the group that authored it, the Democrat candidate never renounced it.

This is what we have come to. Identity politics allows the maligning a race and a gender without a shred of conscience. What next?

I have yet to hear anyone remind us that the Nazis embraced identity politics and unspeakable deeds followed.

Hatred is integral to identity politics. Allowed to flourish it will lead to a very evil end.

Where is the kindness we once knew? The care of others. Morality. Decency? Honor?

Unless we confront those who advance hatred or tolerate and excuse it, we will earn a results that will be catastrophic. Shame, shame, shame.

The prudent sees the evil … but the naive go on, and are punished for it.

Prov 22: 2,3

Shalom.

Footnote – I grew up in poverty in a city whose legacy included signs in shop owners’ windows which read: “No Irish Need Apply.” For decades I practiced law and my clients were predominantly minorities, usually poor, and often children. Truthfully, I strongly resent being placed in a pickup truck hunting children, minority children. I refuse to be so characterized.

Shame on those who think they can do this. Imagine their disordered way of living … they think they can woo white and white male voters by coloring them as racists, bigots. Who thinks like this?